


but I'm heartless

by brophigenia



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Child Abuse, First Time, Loss of Virginity, M/M, Pre-Canon, Pre-Series, aka Joseph Kavinsky's shitty dad, bby dreampack, it's offscreen tho, this turned out a lot more prosaic and sad than I intended, which should be the title of my autobiography
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-24
Updated: 2020-04-24
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:27:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23818423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brophigenia/pseuds/brophigenia
Summary: "Am I the first?" Joseph whispered.(AKA, Proko and K's First Time Ever.)
Relationships: Joseph Kavinsky/Prokopenko
Comments: 7
Kudos: 90





	but I'm heartless

**Author's Note:**

> It's 4 AM.

_ gave you everything you wanted _

_ gave you power, gave you life _

_ *** _

Joseph Kavinsky was  _ tall.  _

He had his mother’s height, which was advantageous for many reasons, and the only thing he’d ever willingly concede was a  _ gift  _ from her, considering that he’d basically raised himself in a cave full of rabid wolves while the person who was  _ supposed  _ to protect him popped Xanax and drank wine until she couldn’t even remember she  _ had  _ a son, much less one she needed to care for. She’d made an art form out of turning away from his bruises, from his tears, from his descent into drug-fueled rages that left glass shattered and bones broken (usually his own.) 

His early-come birthright of six-foot-one made sure he fairly towered over the majority of his fellow freshman students, apparent from the first second he stepped onto that godforsaken willow-draped hellhole that called itself  _ Aglionby Academy  _ and not the more-apt  _ Hillbilly Hell.  _

He towered like a menacing thing, like Mount goddamn Doom in the midst of a hundred hobbits, something that saved them from pain and suffering at his hands, because  _ nobody  _ went after the tallest, meanest-looking kid in the hall. Instead, Joseph had a first-row view to watch them tear at each other— fighting, as unsupervised rich boys did, for dominance amongst the ranks. They were all the same— expensive haircuts, scowls, acne, daddy’s credit card burning holes in the pockets of their tailored uniform pants. Animals in designer clothes.

He collected a pack of them for his own: Ilya Prokopenko, who he’d known peripherally for years. Jacek Skovron, third-string defender for the Aglionby Ravens soccer program. Reginald Swan, III, illegitimate son of a member of the British Parliament and the daughter of a former Jamiacan diplomat. Jiang Hu, poached from the Vancouver Crew, heir to an international mass media magnate.

They made it bearable, but still the walls seemed to close in. He was trapped- fourteen and stuck, with nothing but his secrets to keep him sane. Nothing but the memories of New Jersey and the things he found on his pillows after rocky nights adrift in his own dreams, impossible and mind-boggling. 

He was alone in the night, separated from the boys, who lived practically on top of each other in the dormitory, adjacent rooms that allowed for midnight conversation and mischief that Joseph was bitterly, unfairly not privy to. He slept in his big, empty bed, in the dark, separated from everyone else. Wishing his phone would stay lit-up with text message notifications all night. Anything to distract him from the silence. 

His father came for a…  _ visit  _ in October, breaking up the monotony. 

Boris Kavinsky arrived wearing  _ Sopranos _ casual, khaki pants and polo shirt unbuttoned enough to show chest hair gleaming with a gold chain, studded in gaudy diamonds. Shaved head showing just a hint of gray stubble at his temples. Hands the size of dinner plates, right pinky beringed. 

Joseph stood on the lawn next to his mother at military attention, waiting. His father approached with arms spread wide, smile full of teeth, saying  _ Mirela! Joseph!  _ like he was  _ so _ happy to see them, playing out the expected scene for the benefit of curious neighbors and the black-clad men, Boyko and Little Dragomir, who’d escorted him there. 

“How  _ tall _ you are now, Joseph.” Boris said once he’d finished groping his unresponsive wife, turning all his bulk and his attention towards his son. “Gonna be a big man, huh?” His tone was jovial, almost conspiratorial, but his eyes were flat. Joseph nodded, forced a grin, carefully did not wince when his back was patted too-hard, careful not to look over his father’s head. Trying to minimize his height, make it less offensive. Less obvious. 

The night was dark and cold; the night was unremarkable, like every other one like it before. 

The next morning, his mother dropped him off in front of the Aglionby gates, both of them wearing sunglasses though it was overcast. 

“Have a good day, Joseph.” She murmured mechanically through swollen, split lips. Joseph resisted the urge to spit at her. His pain did not leave room for gentleness, for compassion. He wished she was dead. He wished she was brave. 

“I won’t be home tonight.” He replied shortly, and slammed the door on her soft stuttering responses, putting the thought of what his father would do if he didn’t come back to the house that night out of his mind entirely. Maybe the bastard would fall down the steps while he was gone and Joseph wouldn’t have to take the beating that he was due just by virtue of being alive. 

It was hardly a fucking choice- go home and get belted and battered  _ tonight, _ or stay the night in Proko’s dorm and get belted and battered  _ tomorrow. _ He’d get a few more hours to recuperate this way, a reprieve for the black bruises on his face to turn a more gentle shade of indigo before they were covered in even more pain and violence. 

“You look like shite.” Swan mumbled when he sat down next to him in Biology I. It was the only thing anyone said about the state of his face, his swollen-shut eye and split lip and the scrape on his bruised cheekbone where his father’s ring had opened the skin there. 

In the hall, Prokopenko looked at him through lowered lashes, all stormy expression and raw lips from how he’d been compulsively licking them for  _ days, _ instead of using ChapStick like any other rational person. 

He just _kept_ _looking_ , toadying in between those _looks,_ and Joseph liked having him around, liked having a _henchman,_ a made man for his organization, but… 

but Prokopenko was  _ fucking _ with him. His mouth was too-red. It was distracting, compared to the paleness of the rest of him— pale cheeks, pale hair, pale eyes, pale eyelashes. The only color to Prokopenko was the purple-bruised skin of his knuckles and the splattered-brain-matter-red of his goddamn  _ mouth.  _

And he just wouldn’t  _ stop looking.  _ Joseph felt stripped-down beneath that gaze, uncomfortably analyzed. He’d been showing up to school beaten to hell since he’d been in fucking  _ kindergarten.  _ Proko knew this, the way everyone else at their old parochial school knew it. Joseph Kavinsky’s father beat the shit out of him; it was a fact of life. The same as how everyone knew the Devils sucked ass, or that Seaside Tonys were the best hangover food, bar none. 

The dorm room that Proko and Skov shared was small, with a bathroom that connected to Jiang and Swan’s room. It smelled like Skov’s balled-up sweatsocks and stale  _ dude,  _ a smell unique to all-male dormitory buildings and unmistakable for anything else than what it was. 

Skov was gone, made scarce, probably because of the sharp-around-the-edges way Joseph was holding himself and the restless shifting of Proko’s shoulders, both of them unable to hold still. Unable to speak. Unable to address the elephant in the room splashed across Joseph’s face. 

For whatever reason, it meant that they were alone when Proko rose without prompting and stripped off his uniform, worn-out white briefs crowning the messy pile of wool and khaki and Brooks Brothers-approved white Supima cotton. He stood naked until Joseph managed to bestir himself from his dry-mouthed trance, shoving him down onto the mattress with a push to his solar plexus. 

The touch of their skin was electrifying; it was fear-inducing. It was more than Joseph had ever anticipated. 

“Am I the first?” He whispered, kneeling on the edge of the bed and supporting himself with one hand planted next to Proko’s splayed left thigh so he could use the fingers of the other to touch where Proko was tight and  _ pink,  _ so hard already he was leaking copiously onto his flat belly, so into it that his pupils were blown and his lips were swollen from the scrape of his own teeth. 

_ “Joey,” _ Proko mumbled, agonized, and spread his legs even wider, heels slipping against the scratchy Pendleton wool coverlet that adorned every Aglionby bed. 

It was an answer, and not the one Joseph wanted to hear— he was not the first to have this, Proko beneath him hot for it, knees shaking and fingers grasping restlessly at anything they could seize upon. 

It made him want to tear Proko to pieces. It made him want to leave. It made him feel even more  _ virginal, _ pathetic and young. Made him wish he’d thrown it away on any of the girls he’d gotten to second base with in the back of his friends’ cars back in Jersey, at any of the mixed dances the parochial schools had organized, any chance he’d had and turned down because it wasn’t quite  _ right.  _ Because he wasn’t quite  _ ready.  _

Fuck  _ readiness.  _

Fuck  _ rightness. _

All he wanted was to have been inside of a thousand other bodies besides Proko’s, so he could soothe this sting of jealousy and preemptive inadequacy taking up residence in his chest. So that this didn’t feel so very fraught, so terribly  _ important.  _

Joseph Kavinsky was a  _ virgin.  _ He was about to lose his  _ virginity.  _ About to give it away to the only boy he’d ever felt  _ this way  _ about, and here he was feeling silly and insignificant, like he was some stupid piece of fresh meat instead of a king bestowing a great honor onto one of his unworthy subjects. 

He was furious with it, the anger washing over him like a wave, a familiar feeling for an unfamiliar situation. A hollow comfort, like a child’s blanket.

He was angry so often; sometimes he wondered if it would ever go away, or if it would just grow and grow until it drowned him someday. 

“Tell me you want my cock.” He whispered, cheeks burning hot. Embarrassed. Pushing through it with the sort of recklessness he used to push away everything else in his life that made him feel young and dumb. He was pretending to be someone more confident; he was wearing a mask. 

(Always.) 

Proko gasped raggedly, mouth open stupidly. His cock visibly jumped, purple-swollen and obscene. He looked like the nastiest sort of porno, Slavic features and a cheap gold-plated crucifix around his neck, long-limbed and skinny like he’d grown up in the Soviet Bloc instead of fucking  _ Milburn. _ The only thing that Joseph Kavinsky hated worse than Proko, spread out wide and gagging for it, was himself, for finding it  _ attractive.  _

(Staggeringly, horribly,  _ obscenely  _ attractive. Better than he knew anyone could look. Better than glossy magazine pictures of naked women airbrushed and pink. Better than Skov’s posters of half-naked professional soccer team players. Better than  _ anyone.  _ Joseph would rather tear his eyes out of his own skull than look away. It scared him to death.) 

“Uh-huh.” Proko said, nodding, mouth still agape. He tried to curl one leg around Joseph’s hips, tried to draw him in, but was rebuffed with an absent slap to his inner thigh that made him jump, stomach muscles tightening up. 

_ “Say  _ it.” Joseph commanded, thinking of all the fucking morons who had come before. Imagining them between Proko’s legs, just like this, touching him with assurance. 

“I want your cock.” Proko parroted obediently, and then stretched out an arm so he could fish a mostly-empty bottle of lube from beneath the pillows at the head of the bed, proffering it to Joseph with an urgency that trembled through him like a shockwave. “Joey,  _ c’mon.” _

Joseph went still, holding it in his hands, trying to decide his next move. Trying to figure out how to touch Proko so he’d not  _ know.  _ So he wouldn’t be able to feel the inexperience in every touch, the overwhelming feeling of being so far out of his depth that he was about to drown that Joseph could feel rising in his throat like a cough. Like bile, burning.

He had not counted on Proko, who had made a fucking career out of  _ watching him.  _ Proko, who rose on his elbows and reached out for Joseph’s hand, slicking up his fingers with careful nonchalance, drawing them towards his entrance and canting his hips up, thighs straining to hold himself  _ just right.  _

“First one,” Proko murmured, eyes fluttering closed for a second as Joseph did as he was directed, too desperate and out of control to do anything  _ but.  _ He’d take it out of Proko’s hide later, but for now he could swallow down the indignation and  _ obey.  _ “Another.” He suggested, and his breath hitched into a whine when Joseph slipped another finger inside, scissoring them without being told, feeling out the place where he would be sliding into soon. Wondering at the clutch of Proko around his fingers, too-tight even as he added a third finger, curling them together until Proko was so red in the face he seemed to be feverish, tossing his head back and forth. 

“C’mon, Joey.” Proko charged him softly, and Joseph wanted to hold out longer, prove that Proko wanted it worse than he did, that  _ Proko  _ was the stupid one here, the too-eager one, except he wanted to be inside of Proko more than he wanted to seem tough.

He pressed inside of Proko all in one thrust, unable to stop himself once he’d gotten started, freezing as he bottomed out, squeezing his eyes shut tight, trying not to come immediately and humiliate himself even further than he already had.  _ “Fuck.” _ He all-but-keened, hands tightening into fists over Proko’s sharp hip bones, ducking his head so his chin rested on his chest. 

“Hey,” Proko said dreamily, dazed, and then his fingers were on Joseph’s face, the back of his knuckles just  _ barely  _ grazing over the bruises and scrapes that his father had left behind. It was too much. No one had touched Joseph so softly since- well, at least since he’d been old enough to remember. It made him sick. He wanted to smack Proko’s hand away, and he also wanted to press further into the touch. To let Proko touch every inch of him so gently, so  _ reverently. _ “Joey, Joey, hey.” 

He opened his eyes with no small amount of effort; Proko was smiling up at him so  _ happily,  _ like a fucking golden retriever. His legs were tight around Joseph’s hips, his arms drawing Joseph down until their chests were nearly touching. Joseph felt held, clutched close and tight. Kept safe. 

He felt young, and raw, and cracked open like an egg. 

Joseph moved his hips, drawing them back, thrusting forward tentatively, Proko moving helpfully beneath him even as he chanted  _ Joey, Joey, Joey  _ over and over again, lost as he brushed kisses over Joseph’s face where his featherlight touch had just been. 

“C’mon,” Proko whispered in his ear, hot, squeezing tight everywhere. “C’mon, c’mon.” 

Joseph closed his eyes and pressed his sore face into Proko’s knobby shoulder until it  _ hurt, _ bright starlight pain on the backs of his eyelids that tripped him over the edge between  _ almost  _ and  _ there.  _

Proko hummed his satisfaction even as Joseph pulled out and collapsed on top of him, hard still, making no move to alleviate his problem. Instead his fingers carded through Joseph’s hair, his racing heartbeat slowed beneath the ear Joseph had pressed to his chest, his knees still wrapped loosely around Joseph’s waist. 

“I’ve been thinking,” Proko murmured, and paused for Joseph’s inevitable snarky comment, unintelligibly muffled but presumably scathing.  _ “Joseph  _ is kind of a mouthful. What about just, like,  _ K?”  _

_K._ It had a ring to it. He felt soothed, like all of his wounds had been licked over, inside and out. Maybe he could be  _ K,  _ and leave the painful hurt of  _ Joseph  _ behind. 

K could be someone better, someone stronger. Someone who didn’t show up to first period with bruises on his face, ashamed like a kicked dog. He could be Proko’s only, if not his first. 

He could be a king, not just a boy pretending to be one. 

“Yeah,” He said, and reached between them to curl his fingers around Proko’s cock, pressing rough, messy kisses to his cheek as he drew out a stroke that made Proko groan. “K sounds good.” 

***

_but you just wanted my attention_

_you just wanted my affection_

**Author's Note:**

> follow me @ brophigenia.tumblr.com


End file.
